


To the edge

by Beta_09



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Balcony Scene, Blacksmithing, Cyborgs, F/M, Friendship/Love, Galactic Republic, Gen, Inspired by Treasure Planet (2002), Mechanics, Solar Flares, Space Battles, Space Flight, Space Pirates, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24375343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beta_09/pseuds/Beta_09
Summary: Life isn't linear, it twists and turns mostly unexpectedly.Life isn't fair but Elyssia made the best of it, not that it ever worked out for her.Not that life cared that she was on a ship headed into the Etherium on a quite hopeless mission, she might add.Not that captain Amelia or her firstmate Hawkins cared, it was a direct order from the Galactic Republic's most prestigious space-faring academy and they would execute it no matter what.Why did she take this job again?
Relationships: Jim Hawkins/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	To the edge

"Are we ready for take-off Mr. Hawkins."

It was as much of a question as it was a statement.  
Jim Hawkins looked out over the main deck as their crew was setting everything into place.

The solar sails were billowing in the streaming flow of the Etherial winds as they became powered by far-off stars. Every rope was in place, every person stood on the right spot, only thing left was to check up on the hold using one of the many comn pipes leading down into the belly of the Brigantine.

"Are we ready down there miss Hestia?"

A snarky voice, filled with sarcasm replied to him. 

"Oh James how forward you are!"

Jim groaned, really, could she be anymore insufferable.

"You know what I'm talking about! Are we ready for take-off or not?" 

A boisterous laugh could be heard from the comn. 

"You can tell the captain we're all set."

Jim called back to captain Amelia that every thing was ready for take-off.  
The feline woman looked satisfied at her right hand man and with a small nod told him. 

"Alright then Mr. Hawkins, on your signal we shall commenced."

Jim was excited to hear those words, his fourth trip as a first mate and he was to coordinate their first take-off? That would show Jenkins, now the prick would listen to his bragging! 

Jim calmed himself and shouted for their crew to drop the top, main and fore-sail, he looked over at Mr. Callum and told him to cut the ship from the boardwalk.

Once that was done he turned back to the comn pipes, taking a deep breath he prepared to talk to their engineer, miss Lyssa Hestia, who was down in the hold, taking care of their engine and second thrusters. 

"Miss Hestia, initiate take-off protocol."

"No problemo, sir."

Why did she always sound so sarcastic when she called him 'sir'. Jim could hear her turning and probing around before he felt and heard the roar of their main and second thrusters.  
Jim looked back to captain Amelia and helmsman miss Gamal.

"Miss Gamal, whenever you're ready." 

The tall woman nodded solemnly, smiling at him as she went to raise the power of the engine and make sure her coordinates were all set. 

Jim could feel them take-off as gravity faded, holding on to the comn pipes, he called for Hestia to activate their gravity dispenser.  
He didn't hear a reply but soon enough his feet stood on solid wood as the Brigantine blasted of into the Etherium. 

\---------

Three months earlier

\---------

Jim could finally keep up with Amelia's unrelenting pace as they walked through the grand halls of the Galactic Academy of Etherial space flight.  
Jim knew these halls by heart, it had been five years since he joined the academy's program to become a captain like Amelia.

After his mom, Sarah, opened her new inn, Jim had applied for a scholarship, both Amelia and Doppler had vouched for him.  
He had been one of the youngest students to attended the academy that year, along side a few others he soon befriended. 

He had been one of the first to go on a trip as a first mate, soon after two more had followed.  
Now, hopefully, he would go on a fourth trip with Amelia as his captain.

He had been pulled out of class by her and the head master's secretary, sir Callaghan.  
The small, quite severe man was leading them through the hall to the head master's office, Callaghan had a grave look on his face but that didn't say much to Jim.  
The man always looked like that whenever young Hawkins was around. 

It's not like Jim hadn't received the same treatment before, most of his teachers saw him as a 'problem student' at first but that was before they knew he was the one belonging to the crew that had sailed to Treasure Planet and had returned alive.

It had felt weird to get attention for that, he was a hero to many people now but he didn't feel like it.  
Maybe Silver had been right, maybe he really was meant to rattle the stars. 

He hadn't heard from Silver in along time, but occasionally he could hear rumors floating around about stolen ships or robbed nobles paired with his name and Jim would get a smile on his face.

He hoped to see Long John Silver again one day and show him the person Silver saw in him. 

Walking into the office Jim and Amelia saluted to the man sitting in his chair behind a large wooden desk, headmaster Sterling.  
The man was in his late twenties, a quill in his hand, his blonde hair slicked back, his dark brown eyes lighting up when he saw Amelia and Jim. 

"Welcome, welcome, Captain Amelia, and James Hawkins if I'm not mistaken."

The headmaster said as he gestured for them to sit down in the chairs infront of his desk. They brought down their salute and sat in the chairs as Sterling waved at Callaghan to leave and close the door behind him. 

"You both must wonder why you're here."

The man looked at them with curious eyes, Jim didn't like the way he leaned forward over his desk. 

"With all due respect, sir, you called us here, so you must have a good reason to?"

Amelia was straight to the point as always, Jim never knew her to act any other way. She didn't like Sterling, he was too much of a politician for her tastes.

She had been informed that he wanted to speak with her and young Hawkins, about what eluded Amelia but it didn't promise to be a good thing as Sterling's eyes glinted with greed.

"Ah~ captain Amelia, you are as direct as always."

The man said as he stood up and wandered over to a dresser standing at the side of the room, underneath a map of the known Etherium. 

"But I guess I do need to elaborate on my business with you."

He took a wooden box from the dresser, walking back to his desk. Jim felt his stomach drop at the sight of the box, he didn't know what was in it but flashes of Billy Bones dying on his mother's inn's floor clutching at a wooden chest past by his mind's eye. 

"Two months ago a cargo ship passing through the Outer Edge returned to the Royal Port with something very peculiar."

Sterling opened the box, turning it so Jim and Amelia could look inside. 

"We asked them how this came into their possession, according to both crew and captain it flew out of the infinite space and made a hole in one of their main sails and deck. They were wise enough to hand it over to authorities, we analyzed it and turns out it's the real deal."

Inside the wooden box lay a copper or brass ball, well only half of it really. It's markings easily recognizable to Amelia and Jim, it was part of the map to Treasure Planet.  
They both looked at it in shock and question, it should have been destroyed together with the whole planet, there would have been no reason for it to lay before them almost complete. 

But there it was, Jim could only stare in puzzlement and apparent horror at the implications of the situation. If this was only one half of the map than where was the other one? Would it still work with only one half? Was it even a map to Treasure Planet? Was Treasure Planet not destroyed by it's self destruction? 

All those questions swirled through his mind as Sterling observed him and Amelia, who had the same look on her face. 

"It seems you both confirm what I already feared."

"What are you going to do with it?"

Jim asked the older man who leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed. 

"We tried to open it at first, it didn't work."

Amelia visibly relaxed at the man's words, her ears flicking a bit. 

"But-" 

He continued. 

"-we asked an outside engineer to look at it, one we could trust. She did in fact manage to open it, it showed us an incomplete map, the only thing marked on it was a smal moon not far from the Outer Edge." 

"This 'we' you are talking about is who exactly?"

Amelia asked, her senses on full alert as Sterling smiled at her with a slight bit of pride in his eyes. Jim held his breath, being in the presence of two powerful people such as Amelia and Sterling was already nerve-wracking enough without them ready to go feral.

"As perceptive as ever. I'm talking about me and my faction, most of them are military leaders and tradesmen working with various guilds. The engineer who opened the map works under one such guild, they owed me a favor."

"And you want us to do what exactly?"

Before Sterling could answer Amelia a knock on the door interrupted them as sir Callaghan walked in.

"Your guest has arrived as per your request, sir."

Sterling told his attendant to let her in and thanked the man once more.  
A woman, not much older than Jim walked in, the door closing behind her.  
She had short, dark brown hair, and chestnut skin like the varnished wood of a ship.  
Her eyes were a dark red color and the curve of her brows made you think she always looked serious. She was dressed in one of the academy's uniforms, similar to Jim.

"Captain Amelia, James Hawkins meet Elyssia Verne. You may know her as Hestia of the Hearth, as she is called in some circles, she is the engineer that opened the map.  
Miss Verne meet Captain Amelia, one of our best captains and Mr. James Hawkins, one of our youngest graduates."

The woman looked at the both of them before looking back at Sterling with a hint of irritation. Jim had heard about a blacksmith called Hestia before, both inside and out of the academy her name swirled around in conversation. She supposedly had a great deal of skill when working in a forge, but nobody mentioned her being an engineer. 

"You called, you want me to show them my trick?"

Her words drenched in venom as she approached Sterling's desk and leaned against it side as if she were not in the presence of one of the empire's most influential man.

Sterling smiled at her, amused by the lack of politeness in her behavior.

"If you would be so kind, miss Verne."

He gestured towards the one half of the map, the woman took the halved sphere out of the box, it fit perfectly into her hands. Jim and Amelia watched with baited breath as the young woman pressed and prodded at the map. The way her fingers moved swiftly, almost methodically, over its shiny surface made Jim think off the times he had held the whole thing in his hand.

Why had it resurfaced again? Had somebody recreated it? Was it Silver? But why? What was the end goal? What would the map lead to?

Small green orbs of light flooded from the woman's hands, filling the room with longitudes and latitudes lines. Dots and spheres drifted along the room, deforming and reforming when it hit the bodies of the people standing in the office.

"That's the Andromeda quadrant."

Amelia had gotten out of her chair, pointing to a cluster of planets revolving around one star as it passed them by.  
Jim looked at the other celestial bodies passing them by, Amelia pointed at all of them, identifying them as she had heard her husband talk about them for hours. 

Jim had learned about most of them from Doppler too and knew that Sterling had been right, it was near the Outer Edge. Some called it the moving border, as new planets and stars were being found everyday, the Etherium was never ending and so the Outer Edge kept on moving further away. 

The map stopped moving and Jim didn't know what to look until he saw Sterling and the woman, Elyssia staring at something behind him. 

Jim turned to see a small moon, partially destroyed, hanging in front of his face. 

Jim recognized it as one of those places the empire deemed insignificant enough to not even bother giving it a name, as it wasn't profitable to them and better off being a bustling hub for blackmarket traders, criminals and corruption.

Why would the map point to there? Is that where the other half of the map is?

The map disappeared with the blink of an eyes, green orbs retracted back into the brass object as it closed back up with a small click. 

Jim turned back to see the woman, Elyssia, standing with the halved sphere in her hand, a sly smile on her face.  
Sterling looked at them the same as he went to stand in front of Amelia and Jim, his arms outstretched to them as if he wanted to shake their hands. 

"You see, I need you both to go to that moon and find whatever that map wants you to find. You will sail under one of my associate's trade flags, I will assign you a crew that can be trusted to keep a secret and will give you enough funds to last the whole way there and back."

Amelia seemed at a loss for words as Jim saw a multitude of emotion fighting in her eyes. While he had a ton of questions himself and was quit overwhelmed by all this new information it made him only want to ask;

"How did- how did you know how to open it?"

Elyssia had been surprised when he had focused his gaze on her. She had heard about Jim Hawkins and Captain Amelia long before Sterling had approached her for this job.  
She raised her shoulders in an effort to look nonchalant as she answered the young man who couldn't be more than a year younger than her.

"I heard the stories and I know a thing or two about puzzel boxes. It only took me a week."

Sterling interrupted them before Jim or Amelia could ask her to elaborate. 

"That's why I'll sent her with you, she will act as your mechanic. She will be in possession of the map the while on the ship, it will not leave the vessel as will miss Verne. Once you secure whatever you find, you will return to a designated meeting place and directly report to me, we'll figure out our next steps from there."

It was quiet in the room after Sterling's explanation, Elyssia could see the worry on their face as the contemplated the seriousness of this mission.  
But they won't be able to refuse, just like she hadn't been able to.  
Sterling as a powerful and cunning man, he had a lot of people who were indebted to him, including her.  
Still, Elyssia was pleasantly surprised when Jim Hawkins was bold enough to state his obstruction. 

"What if we say no?"

He looked fiercely at the headmaster as the elder man looked back, a slight twinkle of respect in his eye. Not many dared to go against him, even ones as young as Hawkins, how fun it would be to torment him for it, Sterling and Elyssia both thought at the same moment.  
Sterling got a cold look on his face as he went to stand up straight, looking like the true emperor of the galactic empire that he was. Jim could see him standing next to the crown princess once they were married, it made him feel small, like a soldier in an army of millions.

"Than I, Luitenant General Deckarte Julian Sterling IIV, will command you to treat this as a official reconnaissance mission."

He took a few steps closer, whispering so only Jim and him could hear. 

"Keep in mind young Hawkins, that if you are to fail this mission or are suspected of compromising it in anyway, I will be forced to deal with you swiftly and accordingly."


End file.
